She Wore a Pink Ribbon… Part 2

Welcome back and lets start feeling the (almost the) weekend love. What I love about Rock My Wedding (and there are many things, obviously ;)) is that we get to share ideas with you lovelies across such a spectrum of styles. And then there are weddings like this which some might say is so similar to last weeks Scottish seaside wedding, but when you look closer, at the elegant white space reception with chandeliers and modern florals, it’s a whole new take on coastal glamour.

Enjoy folks and Happy Friday…

The reception took place at the Carbis Bay Hotel. It doesn’t look very much from the front but the interior is beautiful. Think baroque mirrors and chandeliers. Oh, and the view! A perfect piece of Cornish coast line. The staff there are second to none, nothing is too much trouble, with the waiting stuff patiently making up doggy bags for my guests in the evening( we seriously over catered and the thought of all the food going to waste made me want to weep). They have an events coordinator, Victoria, who is just fantastic. She has been a wedding planner for years and is totally amazing at what she does.

Pom Poms and Fluff

Flowers. Now, Cornwall has a reputation for being a little behind the times. Many of the florists I found, although lovely, were a little old fashioned. Then I found my saviour George Mackay. Her flowers are just beautiful. She uses local blooms wherever possible and really understood what I was after. I wanted ball-like flowers, almost ‘fluffy looking’, which George interpreted brilliantly. I love flowers but I could not bring myself to spend a huge amount of money on them. The bridesmaids had simple wrist corsages.

My original request was to have white pom-pom dahlias, but due to an apparent shortage George had to source something just as suitable two days before the wedding. She came up with the Boris Becker Chrysanthemum, which worked perfectly throughout the wedding flowers and achieved the look I was after. Our table centre pieces were simple. Anemones from a friend’s farm in vases we bought cheaply from Cargo. They were colourful and inexpensive – perfect.

Luna Love

We struggled to find what we wanted in Cornwall. There are good photographers, but they just didn’t quite get my attention, being either out of budget, clearly very amateur or just played with their photos too much post-production. I widened our search to Devon and found Luna Photography.

They are couple (Mark and Anna) who cover the UK and are both just lovely. To say they are discreet is an understatement. I barely noticed Anna was there in the morning and was surprised when I looked over the photos as I had no idea she was taking half of them.

The thing I loved most was that when they had finished for the day they discreetly left. No ceremonial goodbye, they just left us partying. They both clearly love what they do and are very professional.

We have ended up with a beautiful set of prints along with all our photos on disk for us to print as we wish.

Going Dutch

The cake! Oh, the cake! We LOVED our cake, and we talked about from the moment we made the booking and people are still talking about it now. Not only did it look fantastic, it tasted amazing. Nicky Grant made it for us. She is a local cake maker who is extremely talented. I have no doubt that, if she were based in London, she would have been out of our price range. We went for a two tier chocolate ruffles cake. It comprised of the moistest chocolate sponge layered with chocolate ganache and surrounded by white chocolate ruffles. No chocolate flavoured icing here, real white chocolate. We served it in the evening with clotted cream and it went down a storm.

We knew there were some people there who would prefer the more ‘traditional’ fruit cake, so my mum made a fruit cake, thus everyone was catered for! My maiden name is dutch and to weave a little ‘dutch’ into the wedding I found a cute pair of Dutch kissing figures on Etsy to stand by the cake.

Favour Fancy

We weren’t sure about favours at first, but decided if we could get them for under £30 we would have some. We gave everyone sticks of chocolate from a local chocolate factory (I say factory, it is rather small operation really). They came from Trenance Chocolate. They were tasty, simple and inexpensive.

Making it Special…

One of my good friends had made 100s of metres of bunting for an art project, some of which she kindly decorated the outside of the church with. She also took over the arrangement of tea and cakes after the ceremony. We didn’t want people to be bored whilst we were having photos were done, so various friends made some delicious cakes which my lovely friends Lois and Avis served. It went down a storm. To say thank you I gave them pretty aprons to protect their wedding attire.

The car was left up to Dave, it only took him a year and a half to organise! He wanted a modern sports car, which I said he would never find in Cornwall. There are lots of camper vans and Bentleys for hire, but sports cars are scarse.

Anyway, he proved me wrong and found a Masserati Granturismo from Alice Cars. A growling, shiny black car with red leather interior. It was worth getting just for the look on all the men’s faces.

For our place names and table plan I got out my old Boots typewriter and wrote everyone’s name on brown luggage tags. Dave will say I am a horder, I call it collecting for those ‘just in case’ moments. Anyway, my ‘hording’ tendancies came in useful for the wedding. In my old job I was chief post-opener, opening post from all over the globe. Any stamps I found interesting or (more often) pretty I kept. Each person’s name tag had a stamp on it, which people seemed to love. So much so, my cousin, who has just opened a shop, has threatened to steal my idea and sell them.

Dancing the Night Away

The hotel has two in house DJs, one of whom we booked. We gave him a playlist which, despite our strict instructions not to stray, he deviated from the list and played the exact songs we wanted to avoid. However, people were dancing all night and we had not complaints after, so we choose not to dwell on it.

The first dance was something that took an age to decide on. Dave and I don’t have a song as such so we embarked on a mission to find something suitable. Now, friends will tell you that we do not act like a couple in public. We don’t tend to kiss, hug, dance in public and on nights out we do out own thing generally. Coming up with a first dance was hard. We didn’t want anything too soppy but didn’t want to go to the extreme of going with a song devoid of any meaning relevant to the day. In the end we danced to The Ramones ‘Baby I love you’. We thought the obvious declaration of love would surprise our friends and it was easy to dance to. We didn’t have a choreographed routine but managed to avoid the dreaded ‘sway’. We thought we may want friends to join us half way through but in the end we wanted the whole dance to ourselves- we loved it.

Advice from a Bride

Our wedding was unique because it was ours. It was also unique in that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to observe a very privately in love couple to be very publicly in love. Our original budget was blown out of the water. Although it wasn’t what you would call a budget wedding it was also nowhere near what magazines quote to be the national average spend. We were lucky enough in that the expense of the reception was taken away from us but we paid for everything else, from the clothes to the honeymoon. We were also very lucky in that nobody told us what we should and should not have, and I am so grateful for that.

Our wedding day was always going to be about us, we didn’t really have to put too much effort into that part. We therefore focussed our attention on our guests having an amazing time and it really paid off.
I know it is said again and again but really do try and take a snippet of time together to soak everything in. The day feels like it is going in fast forward and before you know it you’re waving people goodbye. It is sad once it is all over but the best thing of all is actually being married- it’s ace.

Love Cornwall, Love the fresh photography with loads of colour and the crisp pale as can be backdrop of the reception space. Love the different modern pom pom florals. Love the Beach and Sea. Just love how in love they look.

Becky is at her happiest when dunking a slightly chilled chocolate digestive into a very warm, very milky cup of tea. She also loves her job and pinches herself every day to make sure that she isn’t in a graphic design dreamworld.

‘seeing a privately in love couple to be very publicly in love’- this is exactly how I feel about me and my husband, we are both so independent- in fact after our first dance I spent the night on the dancefloor with the girls and he spent it drinking with the boys!! But as long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters.

The photos on the beach are so cute. Oh to be getting hitched at the seaside instead of in the Cheshire countryside. Not quite the same.
These photos scream summer-at-the-seaside-with-an-ice-cream-cone-in-your-hand to me!